Question about Charlies

[Her Farmstead Rabbitry]

Half of my breeding stock is broken. I have always been hesitant to breed broken to broken because I don't know much about charlies. I do know that if bred with a broken they will produce either broken or charlies. I need some clarification. Do charlies have megacolon issues? Do you keep charlies as breeding stock. Do you sell charlies? If not why? Another random question I have heard of dual siring. How does that work?

 

[Mckatie]

Half of my breeding stock is broken. I have always been hesitant to breed broken to broken because I don't know much about charlies. I do know that if bred with a broken they will produce either broken or charlies. I need some clarification. Do charlies have megacolon issues? Do you keep charlies as breeding stock. Do you sell charlies? If not why? Another random question I have heard of dual siring. How does that work?

Not all Charlies have megacolon issues. I have heard that some do. I believe it was first discovered in the English spotted rabbit. Some are born with megacolon (genetics) ( around 25%) while other rabbits acquired it. I bought a Charlie Satin. so yes, some people sell them. I bred my satin to my NZ buck CC and I was gifted with 6 adorable brokens. Breeding Broken to Broken= 25% solid coloring, 50% broken patterns, and 25% charlies. not necessarily in one litter but over time. I've never had a Charlie born in my litters. I only own 1 broken and 1 charlie.

 

[Cosima]

Breeding Broken to Charlie = 25% solid coloring, 50% broken patterns, and 25% charlies.

That doesn’t make sense?? A broken enEn and a Charlie EnEn shouldn’t be able to produce solids or have I gotten something wrong? Shouldn’t it be 50% broken and 50% Charlie?

 

[Her Farmstead Rabbitry]

That doesn’t make sense?? A broken enEn and a Charlie EnEn shouldn’t be able to produce solids or have I gotten something wrong? Shouldn’t it be 50% broken and 50% Charlie

A Broken and a Charlie cannont produce a solid because there is not a second en gene for it to have. A broken to a broken can produce solids charlies and brokens.

 

[Mckatie]

That doesn’t make sense?? A broken enEn and a Charlie EnEn shouldn’t be able to produce solids or have I gotten something wrong? Shouldn’t it be 50% broken and 50% Charlie?

Sorry, I definitely had charlies on my mind getting my ens mixed. I did all of the squares for practice.

 

[judymac]

Broken is a dominant trait, coded 'En'. Standard show rabbits are En en, one broken dominant and one solid recessive, which gives you the normal 40-60% color pattern (with a lot of other associated polygenes controlling pattern style and amount of color). Charlies are double dominant En En. By nature, they have 10% or less color, and megacolon is a potential issue. The Charlies that survive and thrive are usually without the issue, and can be sold. They can be popular with breeders of broken rabbits, as they can be bred to solids, and ALL of their offspring WILL BE BROKEN. A Charlie can only contribute one of its pair of broken genes, but since both are dominant En, and you only need one dominant gene to express the trait, and En en is the desired combination for show, mating to a solid (en en) gives you an entire litter of En en potential 'good' brokens.

To explain how this works, we use a Punnet square. One parent's gene pair goes on the top of the grid, the other parent on the side (it doesn't matter which one is where). Where the horizontal rows and vertical columns meet, fill in that box with both the gene from the row and the one from the column. In this example, I have a hypothetical trio of rabbits, a Charlie (coded in blue), a broken (coded in orange), and a solid (coded in yellow) to make it easier to follow where the genes are coming from.

In this case, you end up the odds being half broken and half solid.

 

[eco2pia]

I seem to remember getting a buck who was sold as a Charlie, and was NAMED Charlie, and he did look like one, mostly white, with a little spot on his nose and some color on his ears IIRC. Breeding him to a solid yielded half solid kits, proving that he was not actually a charlie, but just a very poorly marked broken. He was a little meat mutt, and came as part of a trio with their own cages for probably $30, so I wasn't too mad about it.

 

[judymac]

Another random question I have heard of dual siring. How does that work?

I'm not sure why you would want dual siring. As I understand it, it simply means the doe bred to more than one buck, which means that you don't know who the dad is on a given kit. This is not an uncommon practice for those working with other types of animals of great value that are doing AI or embryo transfer, or testing a male with unknown ability to produce offspring, and don't want to risk ending up with no offspring at all if something goes wrong. All the offspring can be DNA tested after birth to determine the correct parentage. I have heard of this being used with alpacas and show dogs, but rabbits are not typically DNA tested (and it's expensive.)

 

[Her Farmstead Rabbitry]

I'm not sure why you would want dual siring. As I understand it, it simply means the doe bred to more than one buck, which means that you don't know who the dad is on a given kit. This is not an uncommon practice for those working with other types of animals of great value that are doing AI or embryo transfer, or testing a male with unknown ability to produce offspring, and don't want to risk ending up with no offspring at all if something goes wrong. All the offspring can be DNA tested after birth to determine the correct parentage. I have heard of this being used with alpacas and show dogs, but rabbits are not typically DNA tested (and it's expensive.)

I have no intention of doing it but I have seen reputable rabbitrys do it before so I just wanted to learn more about it.

 

[judymac]

I have seen reputable rabbitrys do it before so I just wanted to learn more about it.

I have heard of it being done when there's no question who the dad is, like breeding a solid doe to a Charlie, and then to another solid. All the broken kits will be from the Charlie, the rest would be sired by the second buck. This would give you more than one line from a single doe at a single kindling, and if you're not sure the Charlie actually did the breeding (especially if you went to another rabbitry to have her bred), having a second solid buck do the cleanup breeding could be valuable.

 

[Drip baby girl]

ok

 

[mrscllc]

Broken is a dominant trait, coded 'En'. Standard show rabbits are En en, one broken dominant and one solid recessive, which gives you the normal 40-60% color pattern (with a lot of other associated polygenes controlling pattern style and amount of color). Charlies are double dominant En En. By nature, they have 10% or less color, and megacolon is a potential issue. The Charlies that survive and thrive are usually without the issue, and can be sold. They can be popular with breeders of broken rabbits, as they can be bred to solids, and ALL of their offspring WILL BE BROKEN.
View attachment 40487
In this case, you end up the odds being half broken and half solid.

Last month I had a litter of 6 to my charlie(whom I thought was Hemi but with white feet) and A chinchilla coloring buck. That litter had a solid agouti, a good broken and 4 seemingly REW. I admit that I have very little understanding of the hierarchy of different gene dominance pairings.

 

[judymac]

Last month I had a litter of 6 to my charlie(whom I thought was Hemi but with white feet) and A chinchilla

Ah, are these the ones you posted earlier in a different thread? Is the "charlie" the one with pink eyes, the broken Himalayan?

That litter had a solid agouti, a good broken and 4 seemingly REW

It's almost impossible on a broken himi to see what the broken pattern would have looked like, how much color she would have had, if the spots were not white spots on a white coat. According to the odds, out of thousands of breedings, the odds are a broken x solid breeding would give you half broken and half solid. You may still have that, as any of the REWs could be broken, and there would be no way to tell, except to see if they throw broken kits when bred to a solid mate.

But, Lady Luck rarely runs according to the odds. Sometimes, the longshot horse wins the race. Odds are close to 50/50 that a litter of rabbits will be about half male, half female. But I often have litters that are all male, or all female. The Punnet square simply tells you what the odds are that an individual kit will be a certain color, and tells you what colors they cannot be. Seeing what you actually get is usually a surprise.

Seeing that your litter had solids told you that the broken himi is not a Charlie broken himi, but En en broken. Since you had REW kits, you know both she and the buck carry recessive albino 'c'. So the chinchilla is c(chd) c, and she is c(h) c. REW has been described as a mystery rabbit with a white sheet over it, you can't tell the rest of the rabbit's genetics by looking at it, because albino 'c' turns off the pigment factories, turns off the printer ink--so you can't see what color would otherwise have been printed. Albino white isn't really a color of its own, instead it's like when your printer ink clogs up, and no ink comes out of the nozzle and onto the paper--the paper comes out blank. The printer went through all the motions of what should have been on it, but without ink you can't see what it tried to print. Albino is like that, we can't see what colors nature would have printed if the ink hadn't been shut off.

 

[mrscllc]

Ah, are these the ones you posted earlier in a different thread? Is the "charlie" the one with pink eyes, the broken Himalayan?

Yes. Same doe that is the broken I assumed was a full himi but you pointed out her white feet.

It's almost impossible on a broken himi to see what the broken pattern would have looked like, how much color she would have had, if the spots were not white spots on a white coat. According to the odds, out of thousands of breedings, the odds are a broken x solid breeding would give you half broken and half solid. You may still have that, as any of the REWs could be broken, and there would bee no way to tell, except to see if they throw broken kits when bred to a solid mate.

OK, I think what I misunderstood is that this doe would be considered a broken himi. I thought it was either or. I thought himi acted like REW and covered all coloring, not partial. When you had explained she was broken in the other thread, I assumed that was where here tipped colors came from, hence calling her a charlie. I just had trouble placing the red eyes genetically. I have another doe, truly a charlie who when bred to my broken buck (I'd say he had 30% coloring maybe) she threw alot of kits who only had color on the tips of their ears, noses, or an odd facial or back spot or so.

Does that mean that the himi gene that gives the red eyes would only allow the color on the tips, IF it existed in the underlying color patterning?

Seeing that your litter had solids told you that the broken himi is not a Charlie broken himi, but En en broken. Since you had REW kits, you know both she and the buck carry recessive albino 'c'. So the chinchilla is c(chd) c, and she is c(h) c.

I'm slowly working to understand each of my breeding rabbit genetics, so I can better understand the potential of kits. This will help. Thank you, again, for your information sharing.

 

[judymac]

Does that mean that the himi gene that gives the red eyes would only allow the color on the tips, IF it existed in the underlying color patterning?

Okay, let's start with the 'C' color gene. There are five options here, in descending order of dominance:

1. Full color 'C'. In this option, all the pigment factories are open for business, they can print whatever color the other genes say to print. Examples would be castor/chestnut agouti, opal, lynx, tortoiseshell, most self colors like chocolate, black, blue, lilac; fawn/red/cream/orange rabbits.
2. Next down is chinchilla, coded c(chd). The lower case 'c' shows this option is recessive to something more dominant, the (chd) is short for chinchilla dark. In this case, the dark pigment factories are fully stocked with pigment, but the yellow tones are pretty much shut down. A chestnut would lose the fawn agouti band, and become a chinchilla. Opal would look like squirrel (blue chin). Torts become pearls and oranges are ermines/frosty. However, since the dark pigments are just fine, a self chin would look on the outside just like any other full color self (black, blue, chocolate or lilac). Chinchillas have all the same genetics as their full-color brethren, but since the yellow tones don't print, they can look different without the yellows..
3. Next down is sable, coded c(chl) for chinchilla light. Like chinchilla, the yellows don't print, but the intensity of the darks is also reduced, so that black looks like dark sepia brown. Sable is also a shaded color, the points are darkest, the color on the back shades lighter down towards the belly, unlike tortoiseshell that also has dark points, but the color is lightest on the back and shades darker towards the belly.
4. Your himi comes in here, coded c(h) for Himalayan, aka pointed white or Californian pattern. Here, the color is temperature sensitive. Like chin and sable, the yellow pigment factories are closed down, only the dark shades can print. But in this option, even the dark pigment factories can't work in warm environments. So in places like the main body, or eyes, no color is produced. They are albinos there with pink eyes and a white coat. But in cooler extremities, like the ears, nose, feet and tail, the dark colors print okay. So you end up with a white rabbit with pink eyes and color on the points.
5. Lastly, most recessive, is albino c, where all the pigment is shut down, and nothing at all can print.

These 'C' genes work in conjunction with the other genes. For instance: agouti A combined with black B, full color C, dense color D and full extension E produces a chestnut/castor. If you changed just full color C to chinchilla c(chd), you'd have your chinchilla buck. If instead you changed the full color C to himi c(h), you'd have a himi. If you added broken En, you'd have your broken himi. The genes work together to create our wonderful array of rabbit colors.